Nuisance

Rather than fight the Liquor Control Board to keep the Elm Tavern's liquor license, owner Steve Paik has agreed to sell the bar, which neighbors and police call a nuisance. The LCB had scheduled for April 17 a hearing in which the board was expected to suspend the license because of continuous complaints of drug deals and brawls there. According to LCB spokeswoman Donna Pinkham, a compromise was reached last week and the hearing was canceled. The LCB agreed to renew the bar's license if the present owner sells the establishment by Jan. 31. In an interview last week, Paik said he would accept the LCB's offer.

One of the most potent weapons for attacking drugs and other criminal activity generated by nuisance bars is an old Pennsylvania law that is often ignored by law enforcement officials. This decades-old law, Section 611 of the state liquor code, gives the state attorney general, county district attorneys and, since 1988, residents the power to close problem bars by convincing a judge that the negligent operation of the bar and the unruly behavior of its patrons are disruptive to the neighborhood.

Mount Airy residents won a major victory yesterday in the continuing urban war between neighbors and nuisance bars. They shut down two of them. And they did it by using the legal system to pressure the bar owners into leaving quietly and selling their bars to people from the neighborhood. "It just goes to show what a community can do when we all stick together," said a jubilant James Adams, president of Mount Airy Block Leaders, who was the chief plaintiff in two civil lawsuits that sought to shut down the bars.

The beer stopped flowing at two Mount Airy taverns yesterday after a neighborhood group successfully used the state's "nuisance bar" law to shut them down. "We did it!" cried a jubilant James Adams, president of Mount Airy Block Leaders, after winning orders from Common Pleas Court Judge Abraham J. Gafni to close the Kent Tavern and the Wagon Wheel Inn on Germantown Avenue near Phil-Ellena Street. The action is believed to be the first time a citizens' group in Philadelphia has used the year-old law to shut down taverns that residents say pose a nuisance to the community.

Do six fruitless cries of 'Hey, buddy, will ya keep it down!' over six months equal a $1,000 fine and six months in the Big House? No, this isn't a silly SAT question, and yes, it's now possible in Pennsauken. And the development has raised some constitutional questions. Under an ordinance the Pennsauken Township Committee passed last night, anyone whose house is visited by the police six times or more in six months - regardless of whether there is an arrest or conviction - could face up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Fed up with the caterer on the corner, a group of Tacony neighbors complained bitterly last week that Perry's Mobile Catering is a noisy, troublesome nuisance. Which, by the way, is about how the owner of Perry's would describe the neighbors. In fact, he's looking to move. "I feel that they are isolating me and harassing me," said Bishop Krabsz, owner of the catering business at Vandike and Wellington Streets. "Believe me, my intentions are to get out of here. " Krabsz and his business have been at 4711 Wellington St. for about three years.

It's not enough to have an unlisted phone number nowadays. Those annoying automated phone calling machines still dial every number, to pitch lucky you on "free" trips (time-sharing properties), $2-a-minute Simpson Family trivia contests, "free" rolls of film and other marketing cons. And it's no longer a simple matter to keep your phone number a secret in geographic areas such as New Jersey where Caller ID is legal and growing in popularity. (In Pennsylvania, Caller ID has been judged illegal for private parties, conflicting with laws governing wire-tapping.

Soon after Voorhees Township's waste-water treatment plant closed in October, Charles J. Lamielle entered his back yard at 1100 Rural Ave. and realized that the air he was breathing - for the first time in many years - smelled fresh, free of any odors from the plant. And so a persistent nuisance from the old plant, about a quarter-mile east on Rural Avenue from Lamielle's home, had been eliminated. But the solution that led to the closing of the plant, Lamielle now contends, has created a new set of problems for his family and their neighbors.

It's the El stop that cried wolf. SEPTA outfitted the borough's one stop on the Market-Frankford Line with an alarm system last fall, and the borough has been annoyed by false alarms ever since. So far, there have been six such calls - four last year and two this year. If there is another, the borough vows, SEPTA will begin to face fines starting at $100. Because the entire station and the surrounding platform are made of wood, Fire Chief Joseph Artmont Sr. said, fire companies from his borough and the neighboring communities of Upper Darby and East Lansdowne converge on the scene every time the alarm sounds.

Oh, the angst of sending your firstborn off to college. Not to mention the expense. Beyond tuition, there's a long list of must-haves for moving in: from computer to clothes, dictionary to desk lamp. And while you're making that list and checking it twice, please note that hundreds of colleges and universities say to pack extra-long twin sheets. "What's with that?" said Edie Altschull, a 1996 graduate of the University of Virginia. "We all thought it was the biggest sham.